Though the Lees preferred suits and ties to shoulder pads, that doesn’t mean the family lacked in athletic talent. Sean’s older brother, Conor (pictured), was a kicker at the University of Pittsburgh and graduated as the Big East’s all-time leader in field goal percentage at 83.3%. He also never missed an extra point in his collegiate career, making a school-record 113 in a row. In fact, the Lee family patriarch, Craig, said Conor was the better natural athlete, but that Sean’s work ethic is what made him successful. “Sean was always more tenacious,” Craig Lee said. “You’d tell him to shoot 100 free throws a day, and he’d shoot 200.”

One can only imagine what it would have been like had
Sean Lee gone into the family business.

Up all night studying case law; cross-examining witnesses with bulldog
fervor; watching hour after hour of Perry Mason reruns so he too might spring just the right
courtroom question at the proper moment.

But alas, Lee did not follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, Donald J.
Lee, the former federal judge for Western Pennsylvania who received his lifetime
appointment from President George H.W. Bush. Nor did he follow his father,
Craig, or uncles Christopher and Kevin into the law.

Like his Uncle Don, producer of movies such as You’ve Got Mail and Julie and Julia and an assistant director on Sleepless in Seattle, Sean Lee chose to set out on his
own.

“Maybe as a kid I thought about becoming a lawyer, but then I got good at
this and it became my focus,” Lee said last week during a stop on his walk from
the trainers’ room to his daily weight-lifting regimen at the Cowboys’ Valley
Ranch training facility.

“This” is football. Lee is an inside linebacker, a Mike linebacker as it is
known in the trade. For years it has been among the bluest of blue-collar
positions with the Cowboys.

Mikes have come and gone. Dat Nguyen was good. Bradie James was stellar. But
Lee already is the best in decades. He’s special. In Cowboys lore, Lee is most
often compared with the iconic Lee Roy Jordan, who last trolled the middle of
the Doomsday Defense in 1976.

His physical gifts notwithstanding, Lee’s trademark is his no-nonsense,
dogged determination. At 26 and in his third season, the blond-haired,
blue-eyed, baby-faced Lee has emerged as the leader of the Cowboys defense.
Think of him as “Bulldog Doogie Howser, MLB.”

“It’s not something he tried for,” said defensive lineman Jason Hatcher, who
is four years older and in his seventh season with the Cowboys. “He leads by
example. He has a passion for the game. He is always studying. He never takes a
play off. He has become the man.”

Just last week in a game that in Lee lore will be remembered for the illegal,
blindside hit he took in the fourth quarter, the 6-2, 245-pound linebacker was
credited with 21 tackles by Cowboys coaches. That just happened to tie the
franchise record set 41 seasons ago by Jordan. Seven tackles, it should be
noted, came after the Seahawks’ Golden Tate tried to put Lee to sleep in Seattle
with the hit that earned him a $21,000 fine from the NFL.

Lee is far and away the team’s leading tackler this season just as he was
last season, his first as a starter. Lee led the Cowboys in tackles and tied for
the team lead in tackles for losses, interceptions and fumble recoveries. He
missed one game with a dislocated wrist and played the second half of the season
with a cast.

There may be no easier way to bring a smile to the face of Jason Garrett than
to inquire about Lee. In fact, the straight-laced Cowboys coach gushed one
morning last week when asked about Lee during a news conference, providing a
momentary oasis in the desert of his daily coach-speak.

Lee “plays the right way,” Garrett declared. Then he sprinkled in words such
as “outstanding,” “instinctive,” “physical,” “leader,” “intensity,” and
“committed.”

“Everything he does, he wants to do well,” Garrett went on. “…You see him in
a meeting room at 7:30 in the morning, and he’s just ready to go. [He’s] like
the old-time Mike linebackers, some of those great names in NFL history. You
almost feel like they have a little bit of a screw loose, they’re so intense.

“That’s a really good thing.”

Quietly effective

Sean Lee recoils when the topic is Sean Lee. He did not campaign to lead the
Cowboys defense. Rah, rah is not his style. Doing his job quietly is.

He rarely camps in front of his locker during daily media sessions, but catch
him walking on the fringes and he is cordial and thoughtful.

“From an early age I was taught by my grandfather and father to lead by
example,” he said. “Basically, it was, ‘Shut your mouth and do your job.’
They’re very disciplined men, serious men, who worked extremely hard.”

Like Lee generations before him, Sean Patrick Lee was born and raised in
Pittsburgh.

His grandfather, the late Donald J. Lee, graduated first in his class at the
city’s Duquesne University law school, worked at a small firm, served as an
assistant Pennsylvania attorney general, and rose to an appointment to the
United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania in
1990.

Donald and Ann Lee, a former newspaper reporter, raised seven children but
not with a haughty salary of a big-time, big-firm attorney. “He was from a small
firm, which makes his rise all the more significant,” says his son Craig, Sean’s
father.

“Judge,” as Sean still calls him 18 months after his death, was notorious for
favoring practical box-like Checker automobiles as family cars. Those vehicles,
which more famously served as taxicabs, ferried his brood around.

Craig Lee earned his law degree at night while working days to support his
wife, Geralyn, and three children.

It was Sean’s older brother Conor, a future kicker at the University of
Pittsburgh, who was the family’s best athlete.

“But Sean was always more tenacious,” his father said. “You’d tell him to
shoot 100 free throws a day, and he’d shoot 200.”

When Craig Lee first asked Sean’s AAU basketball coach to not play him so
much in games, the request was denied.

“He plays so hard, the other kids know they have to play that way to stay in
the game,” the coach responded. “I can’t take him out.”

Lee was a three-year starter in basketball and football in high school. In
his senior season when he was named the city’s high school male athlete of the
year, he played point guard, running back and safety.

For college, he ventured 140 miles outside the Pittsburgh city limits to Penn
State, where he was recruited to play linebacker.

The story goes that Paul Posluszny, the reigning stud linebacker at the
school, was famous for never losing the final daily postpractice sprint. Rumor
has it that Lee beat him the first time they competed.

“We don’t talk about that,” always has been Sean Lee’s standard response
whenever his father has asked for verification.

An on-field leader

By his sophomore year, Sean Lee was a starting outside linebacker at Penn
State. He tore the ACL in his right knee in spring practice 2008 before his
senior season. His teammates responded by voting him captain anyway. His coaches
responded by naming him an undergraduate coach. Lee relayed signals and was
encouraged to offer in-game suggestions.

Back for a second try as a senior in 2009, Lee missed three games after he
sprained his left knee. He played well enough to be named second-team Big Ten.
He was not an All-America. He was not in the conversation for the Butkus Award,
which goes to college football’s top linebacker. And, despite his dreams, he was
not a first-round NFL draft choice.

The Cowboys liked him enough to make him the 55th player selected in the 2010
draft. On his first day of rookie camp, he showed up with a left knee in a bulky
brace and a camera to take pictures.

His ascent has been meteoric. His breakout game came against the Indianapolis
Colts late in his rookie season. He introduced himself to Peyton Manning with
two interceptions, returning the first for a touchdown.

“By the end of that game he had everyone’s attention,” said ESPN NFL analyst
Tom Jackson, a former linebacker. “Every coach in the league looks for a guy who
can make plays. Seldom can you find a guy who can lead a team in tackles and get
back in pass coverage and have the hands to intercept a football.”

Lee says all the attention he receives for studying and leadership is
“exaggerated.” But it has allowed him to slow down the game when he is on the
field.

When he missed the season at Penn State, studying was his umbilical cord to
the game. Then in his fifth year of college, having already completed most of
his classroom work for his degree in finance, he had plenty of time for studying
more football.

Lee isn’t flattered by all the attention his play has received. Rather he
credited defensive coordinator Rob Ryan and politely said, “I have a lot more to
do, a lot more I need to do.”

And to Garrett, he indirectly responded he doesn’t “have a screw loose.”

“I have a passion for the game,” Lee said. “I want to be on the field no
matter what…”

“…When I was young I’d go fishing with “The Judge,” and he would always
preach about how to work hard and what it might bring.

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